Republicans Exact Health-Care Revenge on Mark Udall

U.S. Senator Mark Udall was among the attendees at yesterday’s historic and controversial signing of the health-care-reform legislation by President Barack Obama at the White House. The largest overhaul of health policy in decades will extend health coverage to more than 30 million Americans who currently lack it, but the legislation has ignited a firestorm from Republicans, none of whom supported the bill (via the Denver Business Journal). As payback, GOP leaders blocked a hearing by Udall, a Democrat from Boulder County, meant to discuss ways of protecting towns from wildfires and other hazards associated with bark beetle infestations in Colorado forests. Republican leaders invoked a rule requiring the unanimous consent of senators in both parties, according to The Colorado Independent. Republicans, Udall says, “vowed not to cooperate with Democrats for the rest of the year.” Meanwhile, U.S. Representatives Betsy Markey and John Salazar, both Colorado Democrats, appear on Sarah Palin’s Top 20 targeted races in November. She’s calling for conservatives to wrest congressional districts that she and Senator John McCain won in the 2008 presidential campaign. “Come November, we’re going to print pink slips for members of Congress as fast as they’ve been printing money,” Palin writes on her Facebook page.